Charities fear there may not be enough to go around this year

Chance to register for toy giveaway draws long line at church

Posted: Saturday, November 15, 2008

By Merritt Melancon

With the economic Grinch looming, charities across Northeast Georgia worry that they may not have the resources to help the burgeoning number of families that will come looking for holiday assistance this year.

"I'm not going to lie to you, I've already started collecting a lot of toys," said Master Sgt. Arnold Rendon, coordinator for the Northeast Georgia's U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots program. "But I am worried that we're not going to have enough, we just keep getting so many requests."

Rendon has been getting 40 to 50 calls a day for the past two weeks from people requesting help, he said. Though it's his first year organizing the toy drive, he's never heard of anyone else getting so many calls.

Pleas for help to organizations ranging from the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia to programs that provide children's Christmas gifts to those that help with utility bills have skyrocketed during the past month as companies in Northeast Georgia announced round after round of layoffs.

Every nonprofit feels the pinch this year, but organizers at most remain confident they can solicit enough donations to cover the demand for services.

"Really, it's become increasingly hard to keep food on the shelves," said John Becker, executive director of the food bank. "Almost as soon as it goes up on the shelf, it heads back out."

The organization's neighborhood food pantry, which opens to the public once a week, has been serving about 350 families each week since the beginning of November - a 30 percent increase from normal.

More than 250 agencies serve as distribution points for the food bank's groceries, and they doled out 100,000 pounds more food in October than they gave away during each month during the summer. That's not a normal increase, Becker said.

Besides increased demand for food this holiday season, the number of parents hoping that someone can help save their children's Christmas has surged, say toy-drive organizers.

More than 700 people lined up outside of the Sparrow's Nest Mission Church on Prince Avenue Tuesday afternoon - just to register for the church's annual toy giveaway.

In other years, it took about an hour for volunteers to register families, said David Deloache, one of this year's volunteers. Deloache stuck around for three hours this time, often performing the sad task of telling people that the church couldn't sponsor any more families this Christmas.

"This is the first year we've actually turned away people," he said. "I told people in at least 100 cars that we couldn't take anyone else. That was two women per car, maybe three children per woman. That's 600 kids that we weren't able to help."

David Patton, who's heading up Madison County's Emergency Services Toy Ride today, hopes that the organization will be able to be keep up with demand this year.

"This time of the year is hard on people to begin with," Patton said. "You add in someone in your family being laid off, and it's almost impossible to do Christmas right."

While many nonprofits already have stopped taking requests for Christmas presents this year, almost all of them will accept donations of toys until the middle of December.